Review: Deadmau5 and friends rock BC Place at Contact Winter Music Festival

Thursday, December 27, 2012

By Francois Marchand, Vancouver Sun

Contact Winter Music Festival at BC Place Stadium in Vancouver, B.C., on December 26, 2012. Deadmau5 and fans.

Photographed by:Steve Bosch, Steve Bosch

CONTACT WINTER MUSIC FESTIVAL

Feat. deadmau5, Nero, Alesso, Chris Lake and Lazy Rich

When: Wednesday, Dec. 26

Where: BC Place

VANCOUVER - If you thought plush hats, short shorts, glow sticks and glitter went the way of the dodo around the time Trainspotting became a mainstream thing, you had to be at BC Place Wednesday night.

It felt like they had never gone out of style.

BC Place -- Roger Waters built his Wall there in June; Paul McCartney played to a sold-out crowd of 40,000 in November. Both were landmark concerts.

Wednesday night, the BC Place floor was packed with close to 12,000 electronic music fans sporting mouse ears dancing the night away to the bass-heavy grooves of Canadian electro superstar deadmau5 and friends at the Contact Winter Music Festival.

The event was billed as the first of its genre at BC Place and the largest ever in Western Canada, and if the concert's vibe was totally different than in June and November, the magnitude was the same.

The past year has been positively explosive for the electronic dance music (EDM) scene, and the genre has really hit the big time, with acts like dubstep megastar Skrillex and international sensation Avicii headlining massive tours.

It's easy to accuse house and EDM DJs like openers Chris Lake and Alesso of just pushing play, waving their arms in the air, and letting the lights and the big sound do the work while the crowd goes wild, playing music that has become a strange bastardized hybrid of mid-'90s rave identity and Jersey Shore culture.

But the guys are good at what they do, and the stadium felt like a late-night club from the time UK-born, Canada-based producer Lazy Rich kicked off the evening.

The sets flowed without interruption, one artist passing the decks to the next, the party never stopping except in the moments leading up to deadmau5's set, the crowd barely able to contain its excitement.

British drum 'n' bass/dubstep act Nero's set blended the fuzzy wub-wub style that drove EDM out of the PNE Forum forever along with popular cuts by Toronto rapper Drake, South African Zef rap crew Die Antwoord, Daft Punk and The White Stripes in a seamless amalgamation of genres and periods.

One particular highlight was Promises, one of Nero's big hits, whose epic build-up had many running across the floor to go join the jumping crowd gathered in front of the full-sized stage, the supersized track eventually merging into a dubstep reinterpretation of Hall & Oates'Out Of Touch.

Those who wanted the "real" deadmau5 experience, with Zimmerman's famed LED cube station and LED mouse head helmet, didn't really get it, Zimmerman instead handing out a type of set labelled "unhooked" where he can take more creative liberties and not be locked into his regular setlist.

Purists would argue deadmau5 unhooked is in fact the real thing:

Zimmerman spinning a more open-ended DJ set closer to his roots.

But after four hours of music, deadmau5's set felt like it was taking its sweet time getting going, lumbering along for the first 25 minutes.

Once it really kicked into gear with Closer, deadmau5's remix of the famous five tones from sci-fi classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind, there was no stopping him, Zimmerman finally putting on his black mouse helmet with glowing white globes for eyes for a few tracks.

The party was in full swing.

Logistically, the event seemed to operate smoothly despite some mighty long lines for coat check and for the dance floor's surprisingly small licensed area.

There were a few obvious hiccups that Blueprint and other promoters may want to consider in the future, such as the single gate funneling the crowd onto the floor at the confluence of three traffic streams: The food court, the washrooms and the crowd coming in from outside. Messy.

The lack of any sort of sitting space besides the food court was also trying for fans, many of which were there for the show's full six hours.

And as much as security was omnipresent everywhere in the venue, keeping things under control, seeing underage kids carrying little baggies full of pills and popping them in plain view of security personnel was all too common.

Still, if you needed another sign that electronic music is once again at its apex, consider that promoter Blueprint Events' flagship Boxing Day event had attracted just over 5,000 fans at the Vancouver Convention Centre last year - a considerable feat.

With three times those numbers at BC Place Wednesday night, Vancouver's electro fans capped 2012 in style.